Education Blog

Broad school choice plan unveiled by Senate leaders

Updated at 12:30 p.m.: House Speaker Joe Straus said Wednesday he has an open mind on expanded school choice options, but he was cool to the idead of a school voucher plan. “I want to avoid a scene on the (House) floor over a voucher bill that is not broadly supported,” he told The Dallas Morning News.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Senate Education Committee Chairman Dan Patrick on Wednesday proposed an ambitious school choice plan for Texas students, highlighted by a new school choice tax credit program that would allow some public school students to attend religious and private schools. The plan laid out by Senate leaders also would require all school districts to accept students from neighboring districts – as long as they had classroom space – and mandate open enrollment to any campus within a district. The final piece of the proposal would lift the current cap on the number of independent charter schools in Texas.

The school choice tax credit plan would give businesses a credit on their state business taxes if they make contributions to a nonprofit organization that offers scholarships to current public school students who wish to attend a private or religious school. Patrick said details on the proposal are still being finalized and he could not say how much money or how many students might be involved in the program. Dewhurst said that initially the program could be a pilot project to see how well the idea might work and give the state time to set up a larger scale plan. Scholarships would be available to lower income students.

The four-point school choice plan did not include a conventional voucher component, allowing public school students to take money directly from the state and use it for tuition at a private school. But Patrick said that idea would probably be part of the debate in the 2013 legislative session. Dewhurst and Patrick said the motivation behind the plan is to give options to students who are trapped in one of the more than 500 schools that have been rated academically unacceptable by the state. Public education groups are expected to oppose the tax credits by arguing that it would reduce funding by millions of dollars for public schools and other state needs.